USDA Targets Roadless Areas in Forest Service Rollback Plan

The Trump administration will take public comments on ending protections for more than 44 million acres of roadless national forest land starting this week and ending Sept. 19, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said.

The US Forest Service will prepare an environmental impact statement for rescinding the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which blocks road-building in parts of national forests from Alaska to Puerto Rico, according to Rollins’ announcement on Wednesday.

“For nearly 25 years, the Roadless Rule has frustrated land managers and served as a barrier to action—prohibiting road construction, which has limited wildfire suppression and active forest management,” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said in a statement.

National forests are “dangerously overstocked” with drought-stricken and insect-infested trees, he said.

The Forest Service is planning to rescind the rule after Rollins declared a timber emergency to “get more logs on trucks” and President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March calling for expanded forest cutting to avoid importing wood products and reduce wildfire threats.

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The Roadless Rule’s pending rollback will affect an area of forests roughly the size of Missouri. Separate rules that govern roadless areas in Colorado and Idaho will remain in place for now, the Forest Service said.

The Roadless Rule was finalized in 2001 as a way to protect drinking water and endangered species.

Among the places the rule has preserved are parts of the world’s largest coastal temperate rainforest in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, vast mountain ranges in central Idaho, the peaks and plateaus above Utah’s contested Bears Ears National Monument, and the Appalachian forest in Virginia.